The Feeding of Little Phil Brudgditter in the MVA Waiting Room.

Olaf Dinswuad was damned if he would let a light-weight hippie chickcompromise normalcy and decency by exposing herself right there in the Dillon, Montana, MVA Licensing waiting hall. There were a lot of things Olaf damned-if about, but this was the damned-if to end all damned-ifs.

When Olaf Dinswuad damned-ifed—which, as I have indicated, was quite often—he dropped his head, shook his neck wattles, tightly pursed his pale thin lips, flattened his black eyebrows over his pale eyes, and riveted those pale eyes on whatever he was damned-ifing about, thus focusing all the fury of his righteous indignation into an all out condemning assault. In this case the focus of his damned-if was Vernie Brudgditter, who had committed the unpardonable sin of unbuttoning three buttons of her tie-dyed blouse, popping out an udder and attaching little Phil Brudgditter to it.

Until this point Olaf Dinswuad had been damned-ifing about putting up with ten more seconds of little Phil’s complaining—a kind of high pitched, mewing squeal that would get on anybody’s nerves. Then, Vernie unbuttoned her blouse, and ole Olaf’s head jerked back. His eye-brows pealed back, almost high enough to put hair back on his bald old pate, and his rivety little eyes zeroed in on a rather ample udder being uncovered, complete with thumb-sized nipple oozing a viscous milk. Which nipple vanished into the mouth of little Phil Brudgditter. Which vanishment stopped his mewling squeal. So, Olaf didn’t have that to damned-if about any more.

There were bigger damned-ifs to fry now, for there was nothing in all Olaf Dinswuad’s experience that prepared him for a strange woman exposing her breast in the Dillon, Montana, MVA waiting room. And so damned-if Olaf Dinswauad did. His turkey gobble head sank to the level of his shoulders, His lips went absolutely white and the wattles under his weak chin shook with furious indignation. His eyebrows flattened, a dark ledge above squinting rivet eyes.

Vernie bit her lip as little Phil settled to sucking. Then she looked up and saw Olaf Dinswuad’s rivet eyes damned-ifing her.

“Hi,” Vernie Brudgditter said. Vernie had sensed a ripple of discontent emanating from the bald old fart with hair brush eyebrows. It rippled restlessly through the noisy and overcrowded room. If anything, Vernie was a no-nonsense young woman who liked to set other people at ease if she could. So she “hi-ed” the hairbrush eyebrow guy because somebody had to cheer him up.

He went on damned-ifing. Right at her and Little Philly.

As I say, Vernie was a no nonsense young woman, and she could take only so much of the old fart’s damned-ifing. So she damned-ifed him right back. That didn’t help. The old nickel eye just doubled down on his damned-ifing. People around him were starting look off into the rafters as if nothing were going on. The woman next to him leaned away with a sour look on her face. The young first-timer on the other side of him was rolling his eyes—and mouthing, “I can’t believe this shit.”

So Vernie Bridgditter figured to hell with setting people at ease.

“What’re you goggling at, you buzzardy old pervert,” she said. “The baby or my titties?”

The whole room went still and quiet. Somebody was filling out a form and you could hear the pen scratch. Then the first timer kid snorted and giggled. Somebody else chortled and then the whole waiting room went LMAO.

Olaf Dinswuad went red as a baboon’s ass. It suddenly occurred to him that long before this hippie girl exposed herself in the MVA waiting room, all he knew of normalcy and decency had already been compromised. And all the damned-ifing in the universe wasn’t going to uncompromise it. He damned-ifed off into the nothing-shadows of a corner of the room and waited until he could leave without too much notice. He’d be damned if he’d sit here and take this bs.